Jazz grew out of the African-American community at the turn of the 20th century, a time when blacks were being denied their most basic rights. The music has since become a part of every American's birthright, a timeless symbol of American individualism and ingenuity, American democracy and inclusiveness. In this lesson students will learn about the social, cultural, and economic origins of jazz within the African-American community.

These photographs depict typical daily activities of African Americans before the Civil Rights movement gained force. From the segregated schools of the Deep South to the bustling cities of the North, the backdrop of different communities reveals a range of experiences.

Recommended for: Grades 6-12

This lesson encourages students to identify problems facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction. Students then work in small groups to identify documents describing a particular problem, consider opposing points of view, and suggest a solution and present their research findings.

This Web site, created to complement the Baseball as America exhibit, looks at how this sport has changed along with the country. It includes the following sections:Our National Spirit examines why the label "national pastime" has grown increasingly accurate over time. Ideals and Injustices considers the game's troubling legacy of segregation and why the sport is seen as "doorway to American culture" by many immigrants. Sharing a Common Culture looks at how the game and its heroes have become a form of cultural shorthand. Rooting for the Team examines the ways we share in the experience of the game, from trading cards to the seventh-inning stretch. Invention and Ingenuity Looks at how the American spirit has helped shape the game. Enterprise and Opportunity considers the business of baseball, from the Players' Association to branded candy bars. Weaving Myths looks at the nostalgia of stadiums and how we live out our fantasies through players' achievements.

This class is an interdisciplinary survey that explores the experiences of people of African descent through the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. It connects the experiences of African Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns. Activities include lectures, discussions, workshops, and required field trips that involve minimal cost to students.

This excerpt from WGBH's Evening Compass news program summarizes events of the first year of the 1974 Boston school desegregation plan.

This 1954 statement from Tom Brady, a founder of the White Citizens' Council movement, expresses opposition to the Brown decision.

Zora Neale Hurston's 1955 letter to the editor expresses her belief that the Brown decision would prove detrimental to the educational interests of black students.

Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, in this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, remembers mediating the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi.

This lesson plan will introduce students to the political, social, and economic issues surrounding school desegregation using oral histories from those who experienced it firsthand. They will learn about the history of the "separate but equal" U.S. school system, the 1971 Swann case which forced Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to integrate, and the recent decision to discontinue busing for racial integration in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. They will compare and contrast neighborhood schools with schools integrated through busing, and listen to oral histories of students who have experienced both types of schools in CMS. Through discussion with classmates, they will create a list of the negatives and positives of both neighborhood and integrated schools. Students will then write an argumentative essay explaining which type of schools they would support, and will defend their argument with evidence from the oral histories.

In this lesson, students will contrast and compare de facto and de jure segregation, listening to oral history examples of each from residents of Charlotte, North Carolina. Students will then brainstorm solutions to each type of segregation, and will discuss why de facto segregation can persist even after de jure segregation is eliminated.

The Fourteenth Amendment established the equal protection clause, later used in key desegregation cases.

In this video segment from Soldiers Without Swords, learn about the Double V campaign launched by the black press during World War II to empower African-Americans at home and abroad on the war front.

Today's Educational policies and fulfilling the promise of the Brown v. Board decision

The term “buffalo soldiers” dates to post-Civil War conflicts with Indians who granted the honorific to an all-black cavalry outfit. Buffalo soldier units served in the Spanish-American War, World War I, and the Italian campaign of World War II, when elements of the 92nd Division were the only black units in that war to serve in combat. The road to Italy passed through various posts in the segregated South and Ft. Huachuca, an isolated Arizona outpost where the 92nd assembled for the final push. As featured in the novel and film Miracle at St. Anna, the 92nd distinguished themselves on the battlefield, disproving skeptics and earning an honored chapter in the history of World War II. Two years after the war ended, President Truman signed an order to desegregate the U.S. Armed Forces, closing the book on the buffalo soldiers.

This video segment, adapted from NOVA, chronicles the education of leading chemist Percy Julian. Although Julian began his elementary school years in the Deep South under Jim Crow laws, he became one of the few African Americans of his time to earn a Ph.D.

Students will explore the Greensboro Sit-ins. They will experience segregation through drama, research the people involved in the protest at Woolworth's, and then stage a re-enactment of the event.

In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Harry and Eliza Briggs describe their experience in the first school desegregation case, Briggs v. Elliott.

In this video interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, Freedom Ride organizer James Farmer describes the interracial bus rides through the South that tested desegregation and sparked white resistance.